Libraries

Friday Design Tip: Using an Editorial Calendar

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your week has had some bright spots in it, that you and yours are staying safe, and you have something fun to look forward to this weekend. Today, I want to take a few minutes to discuss the power of an editorial calendar when it comes to outreach and graphic design in your library.

I really love the backend work that makes communications, events, and outreach run smoothly. I love figuring out timelines and schedules. I love making sure that details are taken care of so the big picture, whether it’s a library open house, a workshop, or a new service, can go off without a hitch. I love the interplay between detail work and big ideas and plans that need to work together to ensure success.

One of the things that I really love and that doesn’t get the praise it needs, especially when we’re talking about social media marketing and outreach, is the editorial calendar. Really, trust me, it is so helpful. (And it’s not even difficult to create and use–such a bonus!)

While you can get another tool–there’s so many available for free and for-fee online–to create an editorial calendar, the brilliant thing is that you already have what you need. As long as you can either make a table or use a spreadsheet, you have all the skills and tools you need to create an editorial calendar. So yay for not having to learn yet another tech skill!

So, what is an editorial calendar? It’s a document that allows you to keep track of your timeline for creating and publishing content and comes from (unsurprisingly) the publishing world. This is especially important if you have multiple people working on your marketing and social media accounts so everyone stays on the same page and on the same timeline for the work.

On your calendar,  you can organize when you need ideas to pitch for a meeting of your team, when drafts of posts and graphics need to be completed, what has/hasn’t been completed, and when you will post. Having everything in one place is super-helpful so that no one is caught unawares about what is happening with your marketing and outreach plans and work.

Even if, like me, you are a solo shop when it comes to creating and publishing social media posts for your library, an editorial calendar is still a lifesaver. I use it mainly to track what posts I still need to create graphics for and when I need to publish posts to our social media account. I find it also useful to reference when my colleagues come to me with new events or services they’d like me to post about so I can see where in the calendar we have flexibility and where we don’t (both in terms of my workload for creating the content and graphics and what other time sensitive posts we have coming).

It’s really been a help, especially on days when I have a ton of other work and don’t want to search multiple places to see what I need to post for the day. I even keep the text content (aka copy) in my spreadsheet so I know exactly what is to be posted each day and color-code what needs to still be done. And I just use a Google Spreadsheet for mine.

So I hope this helps inspire you to create an editorial calendar if you aren’t already using one. Let’s make our lives as easy as possible when it comes to the details so we have the headspace to be creative.

Until next time, have a lovely, relaxing weekend. I’ll be back soon with some more news and notes. Allons-y, friends!

 

Summer Relaxing and Designing

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope that the week has been kind to you. Can you believe we are already over halfway through 2021? I feel like time is speeding up and there is so much I want to (not) do this summer. So this post, I thought I’d share a bit about how I see summer relaxing intersecting with my design work and maybe provide a bit of inspiration if you feel a bit overwhelmed with design work now, too.

I feel the push-pull of wanting to unplug and relax this summer versus the need to work and plan for the upcoming fall semester. I’m almost certain a lot of you, dear readers, are feeling that, too. I’m feeling it even though I’m incredibly fortunate to have a 10/12 schedule so I have June (mostly) off to spend time with my family and disconnect from work. Now that I’m back, I already feel behind and I’ve just gotten back.

So how do we try to bring some of summertime relaxation into our work and our designs? Especially if we are thinking about fall semesters with lots of details still up in the air, which means (of course) that we can’t do as much work now designing handouts, graphics, and more that we need for incoming students?

First, like in any situation, we need to breathe and remember that we can get the work done that needs to get done. We’re professionals. We’ve got this.

Next, we need to remember to not take on any of our colleagues’ stress–our stress is enough for ourselves and, I’m not sure if it is true for others, but I do not create my best designs when I’m stressed. I just don’t.

Then, we need to plan out what needs to get done and strip away anything that is extra work that isn’t adding to our ultimate goals and the Library’s mission.

So how does this look like in real life?

Well, after going through a ridiculous amount of accumulated email, it meant that I sat down and prioritized what needs to get done this summer and what needs to happen for the fall. It means, while it’s summer, not posting to Instagram every day, taking time to plot out what needs to happen in the coming weeks, and being okay if we reuse the bulk of our orientation materials from last year (with a few tweaks).

Oh, and making sure to unplug from work on the weekends and off hours. So important so we all have enough energy and rest so we can be creative.

So, I hope that you are able to balance some relaxation with your design work, too, this summer.

I’m trying out a new schedule this summer to hopefully post more regularly. So, if everyone goes well, I’ll be posting more, with more graphics, very soon.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I hope you keep cool and have some time to relax. I hope you have a delightful book to read (I’m reading the very fun, From Little Tokyo, With Love). I’ll be back soon with some news and design notes again soon. Allons-y, friends!

Friday Thoughts: End of the Semester Exhaustion

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you are well and have a lovely, relaxing weekend planned. I can’t believe we are closing in on halfway through the year already. It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, but I think we can all agree whether we are languishing or dormant, it’s been a rough year so far. I know it has been for me. Between trying to figure out our fall reopening while finishing out the semester while determining all the details still to be decided on the new library building with colleagues and how we are going to transfer resources and people over without chaos ensuing and just surviving, I haven’t really had the energy or even a spare minute to write.

But we’re here now so I want to share a few thoughts and maybe some of this will resonate with you, too. I want to talk a bit about exhaustion, and community, and where to go from here.

First, OMG it is finally the end of the semester! I don’t know about you, but this makes me want to dance and give big high fives (with a “Boom!” when we high five because that’s what my daughter says whenever she gets a high five). It feels like a monumental achievement that we made it through. Questions were answered, classes were taught, books, laptops, and hotspots were picked up and delivered, and everyone managed with so much grace and kindness to our students that it was amazing.

But with giving it our all at work, as you know, means often a lot of stress behind the scenes that the public doesn’t see or know about or honestly sometimes doesn’t care about as long as they get the service or resource they want when they want it. And this can be very draining on everyone. So it is up to those who have the power to let their staff know they are appreciated and give everyone some time to rest and recharge, too.

We’re coming up on the break weeks between the end of the spring semester and beginning of summer session. I wish that our administration had decided to let everyone have actual time off (not using up their own vacation) for a few days to truly decompress. Just let everything go to voicemail and out-of-office messages. The website with all our resources would still be available, but everyone behind the scenes could get a well-deserved break.

But while that is wishful thinking at this point, I think it is worth remembering that we need to find ways to concretely help each other out so that we are not in this continuous cycle of stress, anxiety and walking the edge of burnout (if we haven’t already dived right into the deep end of exhaustion).

So what does this have to do with design or communication?

Could we all not try, but actually do better at being open about planning, deadlines, what is absolutely necessary and what is just fluff that we don’t need right now?

Could we all commit to not adding more “what ifs” and playing devil’s advocate when it isn’t going to help and is only going to hurt whatever conversation we’re having?

Could we all decide that if a meeting doesn’t have an agenda and doesn’t have any objectives or is only reporting out information that could be done in an email that we just delete that meeting off of everyone’s calendar?

Could we all take small steps to try to lighten our loads collectively so that we can also all have space to take a breath and have a lighter summer?

I wish for everyone that the answer to all those questions is yes! And that your library administration would support that and that we would make changes that are so obvious that would make our work lives easier and better and more joyful and help us continue to care for our students and public and all our communities.

But if it isn’t a yes or if it is only a meh or “that’s too much work” or “that’s how we’ve always done it” when you suggest these small ways to make it easier for everyone, then my hope for you is that you are not alone in trying to make things better at your library. That you have found community to help support each other, even if you aren’t in administration where the changes can be okayed. That you have people to process with when you are so sick and tired of the whole “leading from the bottom” idea that has exhausted you. Because we can’t fix exhaustion as individuals when it is a collective problem. We need community for that.

I feel fortunate that I’ve found community online to help me when I’m exhausted, to let me know that I’m not alone, that I’m not completely misreading the Zoom room or the lack of support or whatever comes up. It is only in community that we can manage to ensure that we aren’t still exhausted when fall comes with all the in-person/hybrid/online mixes of services and resources that we will have to manage with a smile on our faces for all the new and returning students while we are making it all up as we go along. Because that’s what library workers do.

So my hope is that you can breathe. You can rest. You can find joy in community. You can find bits of beauty in the chaos. And that perhaps, if any library administrator ever reads this, they will be moved to check in with how everyone is really doing, not just what the statistics say or the reports report. And maybe, just maybe be moved to help their people move from languishing and dormancy to thriving. It’s possible and we can do it together.

I do hope, dear readers, to be able to begin posting more regularly again about some library design work and communications work I’ve been doing. Hopefully summer will be a good time to rejuvenate this blog. That’s my hope for this space.

As always, thank you for giving me some of your precious time. I wish for you all the best with virtual hugs and lovely cups of tea. Until next time, allons-y!

Friday Design Tip: Committing to Better Communication

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope this first week of the new year has been kind to you. And I hope you have something fun and relaxing to look forward to this weekend, even if it is just flipping through a magazine for a few minutes or finding a few extra moments to close your eyes. Today, I want to take this space to talk about better communication and why I hope we all commit to being better in all facets of our lives, but mainly how it relates to our work in libraries.

Communication is key. It is a trite, but still true, saying. And everything that involves more than one person involves some type of communication. In libraries, no matter how small or large, communication truly is key for us to accomplish our work, serve our communities, and ensure that we can continue to do what we do. This holds no matter whether we are doing all our communication remotely or in-person or some combination of the two.

This last year has shown us in so many ways, in so many arenas, how important clear, effective communication is to ensuring understanding, avoiding miscommunication, increasing community, decreasing loneliness and so much more. And as librarian graphic designers, we know that well-designed communications—in all their forms—have a much better chance of conveying their intended message to their intended audience than those without thought behind their design.

Good design matters whether we are talking about a blog post, a flyer, a handout, an agenda, or an email. And we can all improve our communications, if we commit to better communication this year.

So that’s what I’m hoping we’ll all commit to this year: being better communicators and encouraging our colleagues and our community members to be better communicators this year, too. We know the basics, we know how we like to be communicated with (and how we don’t), so let’s put this information into practice.

And yes, I know, that so much of modeling good communication comes from the top and that we each have only so much influence (and our spheres of influence are often much smaller than we’d like or want to admit), but we can still do something: we can improve our own communications.

We can commit to being clear, kind, and prompt. We can commit to not “reply-all” when it isn’t necessary. We can commit to creating accountability for ourselves and those we interact through our communications. We can commit to ensuring that we uphold our values in every communication, and apologize when we fail. We can commit to creating the best graphic designs we can when asked for our libraries and being clear on what we need as designers in terms of timelines, content, etc. so we can do our best work. We can commit to modeling how we want communication to look at our libraries and be explicit in what we mean by clear, kind, and prompt communication.

So let’s recommit to good communication (and be explicit in letting our colleagues know what we mean by good communication and ask what they need, then put this knowledge to action). Let it energize us as we move into this year as a way to move forward together and create the relationships we need to stay in community and work through all the hard stuff that is still on our collective plates. Let’s not put communication on the backburner as an afterthought, but put it where it has always needed to be: at the front and core of our work. We can do it together. I know we can.

I wish you a lovely, relaxing weekend, dear readers. If you need some design inspiration this weekend and love all things in print, check out Uppercase Magazine, a wonderful, quarterly print publication. Lovely to preview online, then support (if you can) through a subscription (it’s completely ad-free) to get inspiration away from the computer screen. The latest issue is all about stationery, which fills me with joy and makes me want to create all the handcrafted things and see what will land in my library designs. Until next time, allons-y, friends.

Friday Design Tip: Reusing Designs

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I know it’s been a bit quiet around her lately. It’s not that I haven’t been doing graphic design work for my library or even that I haven’t thought about blogging. It’s that I’ve been exhausted and there never seems to be enough hours in the day for everything. I’m sure many of you can understand and relate to that. 2020 has been a rough year in so many ways, but there is light at the end of the tunnel (and it isn’t an oncoming train!) and I wanted to share a bit before the end of the year (and hopefully will be able to blog more consistently in the new year).

Today, I wanted to remind us all (let’s be honest, remind myself, too), that reusing things is not just about saving the environment by reusing items instead of recycling or throwing them away, but for design work as well. If you’ve made something wonderful, why not reuse it again?

Well, you may be thinking to yourself, isn’t that cheating? Shouldn’t we always design from scratch?

My answer: No! Reusing your designs or parts of your designs is a smart, efficient way to be able to get all your work done, especially now when we’re all juggling a lot more than usual. I know, sometimes we can feel guilty about reusing something (or maybe that’s just me), but it really is a great way to be able to get your projects out the door, especially on short timelines.

Does anyone else seem to be getting last minute projects and hella short deadlines, too? Or is it just me? I don’t think it’s just me from my talks with friends. But short deadlines always make me nervous, especially when I have other projects I’m working on, which is why reusing designs saves my work so many times.

Example is this handout that I designed for a new student orientation. I was told about this a day before it was due, but luckily I had already created a handout for the summer student orientation. So I pulled up that InDesign file, updated the information for our services and resources, proofed it, exported it to a PDF, double-checked the links, and submitted it by the deadline.

Handout for Fall Orientation:

Fall handout detailing library resources and services

Handout from Summer Orientation:

summer orientation handout for library services and resources

There was no way I would have been able to do that if I had decided I needed to rework the entire thing from scratch. Also, there was no point since the design already worked, most of the information was the same, and I only needed to do some updating.

So give yourself the permission to reuse your designs—in whole or in part—and make those ridiculous deadlines without feeling like you want to throw your laptop through the window!

I hope that you have a lovely weekend planned, some time off to relax, and some time to recharge your creative juices. Thank you, dear readers, for being here and reading. I appreciate you. Until next time, allons-y friends!

Friday Design Tip: You Don’t Always Have to be Literal

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope that you have found something that has brought you joy this week and found time for some rest even in the middle of everything. We went to an outdoor nursery and pottery shop and bought some lovely, large pots for our garden. It was a nice break from the routine that we are in of cramming together work and play and childrearing and everything in the house. It reminded me that there is beauty in so many small things. Today, I have one thought to share that may help with your design work: we don’t need to be literal.

What I mean by that is not that we shouldn’t strive for clarity in our graphic design work. Our work should be clear in its message and ensure that our readers are able to get all the important information they need easily. What I mean instead is that we don’t have to be literal in how we interpret themes for every piece of work we do. We can interpret them more broadly and creatively while still maintaining clarity and enhancing our theme.

I thought of this when designing the LibGuide banner for our online resource guide for Accessibility Awareness Month. While I could have pulled from some of the universal icons for disability/accessibility or found photos to try to represent a range of ideas discussed in the resources the library is highlighting, I instead decided for something different. This worked, in part, because the banner doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting of conveying the information on this page. It simply needs to grab attention and draw readers in so they browse through the many resources available to them.
Because of this, I decided to create the banner you can see below using an image of lightbulbs against a blue sky with clouds.

banner with a photograph of lightbulbs against a blue sky with text that says accessibility awareness month

I chose this image because it is striking and lightbulbs are often used as a visual metaphor for gaining insight and knowledge, which is one goal for our resource guide. A blue sky is often used as a metaphor for calmness, peace, and also dreaming and planning big. So together, they created an inspirational visual for the banner. The text is simple and the font chosen because it is reminiscent of the filaments in the bulbs, tying together the theme.

So the next time you are designing something for your library’s marketing, resource guides, or handouts, think about if you can interpret the design theme slightly less literally and whether that would serve the overall purpose of your design. You may be happily surprised by what you create.

I hope this gives you a bit of inspiration to think outside the design box and that you have a wonderful, restful weekend to recharge and relax. I’ll be back soon with more library design tips and thoughts. Allons-y, friends!

Friday Design Post: Good Enough is Good Enough

/ dwakimoto

banner that says, good enough is good enough

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope the week has been kind to you and you’ve been kind to yourself. It’s been another long week, in a long year, and I hope that you’ve found some moments of joy during it all. Today, I want to talk about something that has gotten me through a lot of my work this year: when good enough is good enough.

We all know that perfect is unattainable and can keep us from doing anything. At the same time, having too low a bar for what is good enough, doesn’t help us produce good work either. But sometimes, good enough really is good enough.

What do I mean by this?

To get anything done during this time, I’ve embraced good enough as one of my mantras.

I don’t have time to design everything from scratch, so I’ve had to adapt templates and streamline my design process. And that’s good enough for Instagram posts and other ephemeral marketing needs.

It’s okay that I don’t have time or space to take as long to find the “perfect” font. One that ticks most of the boxes and supports the design theme, is just fine. It’s good enough.

It’s okay to simply design good enough and not try for groundbreaking right now.

And there are some advantages to this, too, that I didn’t foresee in the beginning, even though I long for the days of again having enough time to do more wholly original graphic design work. I have created templates for our workshops, that I’ve written about previously, which brand our workshops and make it easier for me to update the graphics for the many workshops we have each term. Good enough has created a branded look that is simple, collegiate, and recognizable.

Good enough allows me to create the space to take on the graphic design work that comes up with very short deadlines. We all know that projects come up at the last minute and it is good to be able to help out with these requests when we can. I’ve been able to create banners for online displays and handouts for instructional sessions by freeing time and design headspace by embracing good enough.

So, while I’m not a fan of ever using good enough as an excuse to do sloppy graphic design work, it is a good mantra to be kind to ourselves and acknowledge that this is a difficult time and while we still need to be creative and create, we don’t always have to make something that is wholly original and will last for the ages.

That’s all I have for today. I hope you have a rejuvenating weekend, find something to refill your creative passions, and come back as refreshed as possible to your next bit of library design work. Allons-y, friends!

Friday Design Tip: Using Adobe Spark Video for Library Promo Videos

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday! I don’t know about you, but it has been a week here in a year that has been quite a year. We’ve had more ash falling from the sky, more fires, and darkened days, which makes it hard to focus on work even when the work is important. I know it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted, not because I haven’t been doing or thinking about sharing library design tips, but because I’ve been overwhelmed with everything. But, in the midst of all of this, we must continue to do the work that allows our communities to access the information and help they need. To that end, I’d like to share something a bit different: using your graphic design skills in a video format.

You’ve probably heard about videos garnering more engagement than still photos/images and, while I’d never suggest giving up doing 2D graphic work, sometimes it’s good to expand our skill sets and try new things. Creating videos is one way to stretch our graphic design skills.

Adobe Spark, which I love using for Instagram posts (which seem to be all the design work time I have lately), also has features to allow you to create simple videos. While there aren’t as many options and controls as you have with video editing tools such as Premiere Pro, it is just fine for creating short promo videos and highlighting parts of your collection.
I created the video below to use in our Library Orientations during the summer and start of our fall semester. I combined stock photos with simple information about our services and resources, chose a base theme, and added music from the selection pre-loaded into Adobe Spark.

And, I’m happy to report that the learning curve for creating a video on Adobe Spark is much lower than learning to use Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator or InDesign. But the results are still polished and eye-catching for your users.

Remember to use your graphic design skills from 2D designing (like rule of thirds, contrast, matching fonts with theme and graphics, etc.) when creating a video, too, and you’ll have new promo videos for your library in (almost) no time.

It’s fun to learn a new skill and find new ways to promote your library’s services and resources. At least, I found it to be energizing during these tough times and gave me some more inspiration for creating library designs when I felt my creative well running dry.

I hope you have a relaxing and rejuvenating weekend. Stay safe, help your neighbors, and be kind. Allons-y, friends!

 

Friday Design: Creating Webpage Banners with a Consistent Theme

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope the week has treated you well and that you remain healthy and have a relaxing weekend to look forward to. Today I want to share a design tip that will help you keep a consistent theme while saving you time. And we could all use a little more efficiency in our design work, couldn’t we? I know I can as I look towards the starting of the next academic term and juggling everything life seems to be throwing at us now (in addition to our graphic design work!).

Over this summer, we revised and cleaned up our online Exhibits LibGuide. There used to be many (many) disparate guides to past exhibits, but thanks to one of my colleague’s careful and patient work, they are all now collocated. This makes it much easier for viewers to find all our past exhibits and makes the backend work much easier, too.

Once this was done, while the organization of our exhibit pages on the LibGuide were functional, we didn’t have an coherent visual theme to link together our top landing pages for the guide itself, as well as past and current exhibits. This wouldn’t do for a guide that was all about exhibits where we expect good visuals. So I created three banners for these pages, which sounds like a lot of work, but once I created the first one, I used it as a basis to tie together the theme with the other two.

Here’s the first banner for the homepage of the LibGuide:

Online Banner for exhibit LibGuide that says Library Exhibits

I chose images, type, and colors that worked together to create a coherent theme. The theme was to express exhibits and the diversity of our campus community that inspires us. I sampled colors in the photographs for the font colors and the background color. With this done, I decided to use the same layout for the other two banners, but change out one image in each.

This is the past exhibit banner:

Online Banner that says Past Exhibits

And this is the current exhibits banner:

Online banner that says Current Exhibits

Notice how they maintain the overall theme through the same use of color palette, fonts, and layout, but have unique images used, too. This makes the banners more visually interesting, yet maintains coherency across the landing pages.

This design “trick” enables us to both maintain a consistent theme and inject some fun, visual interest into the banners. It also allowed me to create three banners in only a little more time than it would take me to create one because I wasn’t trying to reinvent theme and layout for each of them.

I hope this design example is helpful and useful for when you are considering how to design or revamp banners or implement design themes on your LibGuides, webpages, or other multiple page documents.

I hope you have a lovely, restful, and safe weekend. I’ll be back again with more design thoughts to save you time and hopefully provide new insights for your library graphic design work.

Allons-y, dear friends!

Designing for a Difference

/ dwakimoto

Black Lives Matter graphic

Hello, dear readers. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling weary and angry and tired and most everything else that isn’t joyful now. I can’t believe we still have people who argue when we say, Black Lives Matter. Not only do we have to continue to deal with the pandemic, we are now seeing (again) the brutality of the police not only murdering George Floyd (and so many others) but also reigning down violence against peaceful protesters. For those who throw their hands up in the air and ask how this can be happening or blame those in the streets who are protesting, I feel like shaking them and saying how can you not see the structural, institutional racism that permeates everything in our society? How can you be shocked? How can you blame the protesters and not those in power who perpetuate the injustice that keeps them safely in power?

And how can we, who have relative privilege help combat these injustices and fight against white supremacy? And what, dear readers, you may be wondering does any of this have to do with design and libraries?

We have an obligation, as those who work in libraries, to ensure the safety (physical, emotional, and mental) of all our patrons. We have the obligation to call out injustice and we have the means to affect some change. Perhaps only on a small scale, perhaps only in our libraries, but together we can amplify others’ voices who know so much more (for example, Layla F. Saad and Ibram X. Kendi, to only name two) and we can contribute our share to making the world a more just and equitable place.

If you need some place to start, check out 75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice. And, yes, I specifically picked this link because, as we know, the library profession is still overwhelmingly white. There is so much we can do to support our BIPOC siblings and fight against white supremacy and there are so many resources online to help (I trust librarians to be able to find them so I’m not listing a ton here.)

And, as librarian graphic designers, we can help by doing what we do best: designing. We can design posters, social media graphics, flyers, handouts, websites, whatever you can think of that bring awareness and hopefully change. We can give freely of our skills to organizations and groups that are fighting the good fight. And we can make sure to use our design skills to be part of the hard work of fighting injustice and not part of the problem by remaining silent.

The Black Lives Matter graphic at the beginning of this post is formatted for sharing. Feel free to remix it, add it to a handout, a flyer, whatever you are doing to raise awareness and solidarity. Find other artists who are creating amazing protest art that speaks to you and share it (with their permission, of course). Monyee Chau’s work speaks to me as a mixed race woman and I love the updating of the much older, “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power,” protest sign.

Remember that design and graphic design are about solving problems. We face huge problems now. So let’s use our skills, talents, hearts, and minds (and wallets, when we can) to help where we can.

Thank you, as always, for reading, dear readers. I’ll be back soon with more news and notes. Allons-y, friends!